Please Murder Me (1956)

Please Murder Me is the kind of lean, hardboiled noir that grabs you by the lapels with a deliciously wicked premise: what happens when a defense attorney wins an acquittal, then realizes he’s freed the very person who deserved conviction. Peter Godfrey stages the story with crisp economy—part courtroom drama, part moral fever dream—letting tension build not through flashy violence but through the tightening vise of guilt, obsession, and revenge. Raymond Burr brings weary gravitas to a man watching his own ethics rot in real time, while Angela Lansbury is captivatingly poised, the sort of presence that can make a lie feel like a lullaby. It’s modest and melodramatic in that 1950s way, so if you want sprawling spectacle you won’t find it here—but if you like noir’s icy moral traps and a courtroom thriller that plays like a confession whispered into the dark, this one’s a sharp, satisfying watch.

Please Murder Me wants to be a lean, morally thorny noir about a lawyer realizing he’s helped the wrong person and then trying to engineer “justice” outside the courtroom. The problem is the plot leans hard on contrivances and big melodramatic turns, so if you need your thrillers to feel plausible and psychologically grounded, you’ll likely spend more time poking holes than feeling tension. That said, Angela Lansbury and Raymond Burr bring enough intensity to keep the cat-and-mouse dynamic watchable, and the framing device gives it a decent hook. Worth a look if you enjoy heightened 1950s courtroom noir and don’t mind logic taking a back seat to theatrical payoffs.